Laptop burns! Pizza frequencies! Drug trial speed! Knife-throwing wonder! Drill-less cavities! Rabies alert! Minorities in science! It's your Monday Health Watch, where we watch your health—so single-mindedly we scarcely notice the hot item roasting our poor flesh!

  • Do you know what laptops will do to you, besides make you a nerd? They will damage your skin by when you set them on your lap and then they heat up and you don't move them for hours and the heat heats your skin a lot. Scientists say stupid people are at greatest risk.
  • Thursday is the most popular night for pizza delivery! What does that have to do with health? Well if you leave the hot pizza cheese on your bare thighs you might get burned.
  • Drug trials are notoriously slow, so people with deadly diseases who don't have the luxury of time are trying lots of "innovative approaches" to speed up the science on potentially life-saving drugs. One of those approaches: heat the drug to boiling, then leave it on a patient's lap overnight. It doesn't work.
  • Here's a real health-defying activity: spinning on a wheel while a blindfolded guy throws knives at you! Almost as scary as prolonged exposure of your inner thighs to annoying, but not scarring, levels of heat.
  • Good news: A new cavity-filling technique doesn't require the use of dentist's drill! Bad news: it does require putting acid in your mouth. And in your lap! No, just your mouth.
  • The government has issued a RABIES ALERT for travelers headed to Africa and Asia, after a US tourist died after being bitten by a rabid dog in India. Travelers are advised to avoid animals that are foaming at the mouth, or that have a white-hot laptop resting on their genitals.
  • A recent report recommends heavy investment in educational programs aimed at increasing the numbers of minorities who get science and engineering degrees. We want them to fry their lapskins at a rate equal to that of whites.

This is America, after all.

[Pic: Shutterstock]